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This post has been a long time coming: A list of red flags to help you identify a pseudoscience or quack modality. I don’t recommend reading this entire article in one sitting, just as I probably shouldn’t have written it in such a fashion. Think of it as a reference guide.

Before we begin, let me address the overarching red flag/rule to live by: If it sounds too good to be true. It probably is. Shall we, then?

“Toxins” – Apparently the world we live in is so polluted and poisoned that we couldn’t possibly survive without the need of some fancy detoxification device/patch/diet. Bull. These snake-oil scams have been around for ages, claiming to remove harmful pollutants from the body for a modest fee. They compare it to changing the oil in your car, because you know, your body can’t take care of itself. In extreme cases, hucksters were once known to craft pills that contained foreign objects or oils**. When the customer inspected their stool after taking the pills, they would find these objects and deduce that the pill had cleansed them from their gut. In today’s age of litigation, this is much rarer. These days, olive oil detoxification diets will claim that green lumps seen in the stool are the ‘toxins’ all bundled up and sent down the river. In actuality it’s just the obscene amount of olive oil they were taking.

Try this as a test, ask the pro-detox advocate to name some toxins, or even define what a toxin is. Most people will say something like “Uh Ionnuo” which is moonspeak. Kill them with fire. The fire of evidence-based medicine. Now, things get a little fuzzy when some quacks will prescribe chelation therapy to cleanse your body, which is a normal procedure for cases of heavy metals poisoning. You can insert a Pantera joke here. The danger is that chelation isn’t a gentle process, and using it frivolously can only cause more harm than good. Your liver does a fine job of cleaning out your blood, and if it wasn’t properly disposing of ‘toxins’ you’d know it for sure. Liver failure is serious business, and you won’t just feel a little sick or “lacking energy”.

“Energy” – This brings us to our next red flag. Popular culture would have you believe that energy is a field that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together. See? That was Star Wars. Point made. This is not how energy works. There is no ‘energy’ field floating around. Energy is the measurement of work capability, meaning it is the quantifiable amount of a force acting upon an object. Oops, I said the F word. It can come in many forms such as kinetic or electrical energy, but at their roots they are both the same thing, the result of atoms interacting with one another. You don’t just pluck it from the air, nor is it emitted by magic bracelets. It does not act on specific aspects such as brain activity or balance. These are merely the claims of hucksters taking advantage of a poorly understood scientific concept. The ‘quantifiable’ part is important, because many times, con artists will just make up a form of energy and claim it is undetectable by science.

Other types of energy include body energies like Chi (ki or qi depending on who you talk to) and the Chakra (energy vortices in the body that can be “blocked”) model which flow through the body and determine our health. We’ll be taking a closer look at this form in a future comic about Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Ancient Wisdom-Speaking of Chinese Medicine, the Appeal to Antiquity is a common logical fallacy that states “If something has been around for a long time, then clearly it works.” It is used to give credence to many ancient, yet erroneous practices. It often comes disguised as the excuse “It’s tradition!” It’s a logical fallacy because the only evidence it has to its merit is its age. You can make up your own Larry King jokes here. I’ll wait.

Ancient practices have no place in the modern world, no matter how near and dear they are. Times change, and when people don’t want to change with them, they demand that their ancient ancestral practices as somehow sacred and deserve respect, no matter how ludicrous they may be. Beware.

“Quantum” - Subatomic particles behave in ways that send the mind spinning. Twin particles entangled with one another respond to identical changes across vast distances. The positions of electrons appear to be anywhere and everywhere in a state of superposition until the act of observation pins it in place. Quantum Tunneling allows a particle to pass completely through a barrier otherwise thought impossible for no reason other than its kinetic energy is less than the potential energy of the barrier. But just as the laws of physics break down when entering the event horizon of a black hole, these quantum properties do not work at the macroscopic level. Entanglement will never allow you to communicate telepathically just as quantum tunneling doesn’t let you go through walls. Though I hear if you run fast enough, the empty space in your atoms passes through the empty space in the atoms of the wall. Go on, try it. I’ll wait here.

Meanwhile, in reality, quantum physics will never directly affect your life*. But ‘quantum’ is a funny word, and like energy before it, the public’s poor understanding of it is used to the charlatan’s advantage. Try peppering an explanation with ‘quantum’ sometime and watch the glassy-eyed nods in agreement. Deepak Choprafamously mangles quantum mechanics to promote healing and new age energy quackery. Last year a spiritual leader was convicted on rape charges for among many things, healing his female followers with his “organic penis“. Sigh. (There’s another red flag for you. The only person who can heal with their steel is Dragonboy Suede.)

The Panacea - This one is simple. There is no one thing that cures all ailments. There is no one thing that causes all ailments. Apply this red flag and watch the various pseudosciences light up the board. It’s just not that simple.

Natural Fallacy-This is another simple one. Natural = Good. Well, as comedian Matt Kirshen once stated “Heroin is natural. Nicotine is natural. A pack of wolves is natural.” Natural does not necessarily mean it is good and healthy, just as ‘unnatural’ does not equate bad. In fact, while you’re arguing this point, ask them to define ‘natural’ and ‘chemicals’. Then let them know that arsenic is natural and water is a chemical. BAM.

Conspiracy/Little Known Secret-This red flag can be reasoned out just by thinking two steps further. Say a man has developed a car that runs on dog pee, but the auto industry and Big Oil is keeping him down. Now only YOU can benefit from his discovery, because you’re so smart. Right. Even if Big Auto was keeping him down, what’s stopping the rest of the world? You don’t think China would gobble that up and blow us out of the water with their new free energy tech? See how it plays into the human desire to be in on something?

A more recent example, a man was diagnosed with cancer, and being the smart, counter-culture, stick-it-to-the-man hipster that he was, he googles cancer. To his horror he discovers that tumors feed on sugar (Biology anyone?). He stops his chemo immediately because they gave him sweets with his lunch, and he goes off on a magical mystery tour of quack-land, 100% certain that he has toppled western medicine. Where does this guy go to stick it to Big Pharma? Whole Foods. He is so fucking hip.

Finally, Putting Things Other than Medicine in Orifices Other than Your Mouth - You thought this was a punchline didn’t you?

Let’s not forget Ear Candling, which is not only dangerous, but illegal in some countries. It’s such a stupid idea that they had to make a law to keep people from sticking flaming objects in their ears.

Let me also take this time to talk to you about douching. Yeah yeah, I know. Big bearded guy talking about lady parts. Sit the hell down and listen.

The invention of the douche was one of necessity in an age where the vagina was viewed as a dirty hell-hole to where dirty nasty things are done and screaming demon babies emerge– unless you’re married, then it’s HUGS AND FLOWERS. Sadly, we still live in this age. So squirting vinegar solutions up in there is recommended by flowery sounding women on daytime TV commercials.

Draconian ideological and misogynistic reasons aside, all signs point to the eradication of natural flora to increase the risk of infection rather than prevent it. Listen, just like in your gut, which is also filled with awesome bacteria, you want the good bacteria to have a monopoly in there. If you’re stuffed full of helpful, non-virulent germs, the bad ones won’t be able to find food and will often be killed by the good ones. Clearing the poor buggers out? Not good.

So that’s it. Expect this post to updated now and then as either A) New Red Flags emerge or B) I got something totally wrong. We will also be referring to this comic in future posts about pseudoscience, quackery, and snake-oil. PEACE.

* Now, that’s not to say we haven’t made leaps and bounds in technology based off of quantum physics. Flash memory, atomic clocks, and anything that uses superconductors are examples of quantum physic’s effect on our lives.

** For more details on this nugget, check out Ann Anderson’s book about the heyday of American Snake-Oil marketing.

Yeah, I’m one of those people who gets worked up over this issue, and not just because I was raised with proper English spellings… this is possibly the only Americanised spelling that actually results in mispronouncing the word. Writing “sulfur” instead of “sulphur” doesn’t make any difference when pronouncing the word… Now we just have to see to fixing the spellings of tantalum, molybdenum and lathanum… I’m pretty sure they gave aluminium the idea that elements could end in -um instead of -ium.

“According to the internet…”

What about platinum? Also, the British scientist who first named aluminum is the one who decided on the name aluminum and an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, in a review of his book, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, “for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound.” Furthermore, aluminum is also the preferred Canadian spelling. Finally, if you prefer “proper English spellings” shouldn’t you be satisfied with tantalum and so forth?
P.S. I don’t think lathanum a “proper English” spelling of lanthanum.

Jack Blythe

No, you spelled Aluminium wrong.

Scubamike

/Facepalm Goddamn you Webster!!

See also: aluminio, alüminyum and алюміній

Science_1

Can we use your wonderful cartoon to help promote our free-thought group at a local community college?

-Thanks,
-Sci_1

Maki

Of course!

Maki

Oh! One more thing. Feel free to e-mail the info for your group and I’ll throw a plug onto the next post!

http://bradblogspeed.com Brad Goodspeed

I remember when I started my blog I wasn’t 100% sure what direction I was going to take it in, nor how comfortable I was exposing my skepticism to family and friends.

Then I saw a video of Deepak Chopra talking down to non-believers with his pseudo-babble, and got tres pissed. I wrote about it angrily, and then never looked back.

Which makes me wonder, would the tools who pack into Deepak’s talks do the same if his name was ‘Vapidpak’? Does having ‘Deep’ in your name give you the power to subconsciously manipulate the shallow?

DataJack

Excellent, excellent post. Sloppy thinking is rampant in today’s society, and this really does help us to identify it.

Emma

From now on, everyone who touts naturalness to me as being inherently perfect will be encouraged to rub poison ivy on their genitals.

It’s traditional.

Also, a tip for your gentlemen readers: “Try out my subatomic penis,” is not an ideal pick-up line.

oh snapz! i just used the “water is a chemical” line on a patient. thanks Sci-ence!

http://www.worstwebcomic.com Scott

Every time I look at this comic I wish I had these for refrigerator magnets. I think my daughter would like playing with them along side the alphabet magnets; and they might even prove more educationally beneficial in her future.

http://www.meetup.com/freethoughtdayton/ Science_1

Thank you Maki!

I will include the words “Used courtesy of science.page8productions.com” on the pinup fliers.
We are Freethought Dayton.

-Science_1

-The only warning most of us get is, ‘Mind that bus. What bus? Splat!’
-Red Dwarf

“All natural = good” is the “quack” I hear the most. And I never fail to be amazed that so many people fail to recognize the glaring and extremely obvious contradiction; all sorts of natural things aren’t particularly “good” at all. Frankly, this is probably the easiest of the “quacks” to dispel as it requires a minimum of “dot connecting”.

The fact that this is not happening is more than a little frightening.

I guess you can add “snake oil salesperson” to the list of recession-proof jobs.

For this study, 84 people today were randomly assigned to both of 2 groups. An individual group of people today obtained a placebo mixture of 3 ml of jojoba oil and twenty ml of grapeseed oil and had been told to massage it into the scalp each and every night time for 2 minutes. The head was then wrapped in a warm towel to boost absorption of the oils, with the addition of crucial oils of thyme, lavender, rosemary, and cedarwood. The review lasted for 7 months.

I sure wish they had a class in high school (or middle school) where they taught this stuff. This, logical fallacies, what makes a good study, how to tell real information from garbage on the internet…if we could teach our kids all of this stuff early we would be so much better off as a society.

Jane DJ

Barb – there is a great program called Thinking Science that schools here in Australia are just starting to come on board with. Amazing, and inspiring, has the potential to make scientific thinkers out of our kids. Just come back from a 2 day workshop with the teachers at my school ( I’m the lab tecchie), we are implementing the program with our Year 8′s in 2012. Exciting stuff!

“Other types of energy include body energies like Chi, Qi, Chakra, or Ki which flow through the body and determine our health.” should mention “prana”, not “chakra”. Chakras are supposed to be various body centers through which prana flows.

Just saw this chart after its mention in today’s “Ghosts of Woo” start, and I love it!

Maki

I mean this in the most sincerest way possible: the greatest thing about having more readers is better proofreading Thanks, glad you like it!

Glas

Yah, we all need proofreaders sometime. I usually find four or five common mistakes in my writing about an hour or two after I’ve been ranting and screaming all about someone else using the wrong word or spelling choice (“But I was sleepy when I wrote that…” is usually my attempt at self-justification. ^_^ ).

And I’m looking forward to seeing the updated version of the chart — went to lunch with a friend who was ranting about a book loaned to her by a co-worker, and for three or four of her complaints I was able to say “Yah, he put THAT on his chart too!!!”

gibby939

When will the poster be available? Because want.

Maki

I’d like to give it a quick update first. Strengthen some of the terms, maybe even add panels. If you have any suggestions, feel free to pass them on!

I would like to write a blog post about quackery (linking to your article of course with proper attribution). Is it ok if I use your cartoon in my article?

Maki

Go right ahead. Linkbacks are all we ask for

http://blog.anarchic-teapot.net anarchic teapot

Brilliant, concise, easy to understand. We need posters like this translated into every language bon Earth.

chgo_liz

Regarding douches: they have also been used as a form of birth control.

Even less effective then NFP, so this alternate use fits in well with the general theme.

http://scarina.wordpress.com scarina

Found this post via Pharyngula, it really made my day.
A lot of my “stick-it-to-the-man” friends are into quantum woo so I love to post things like this on Facebook. I hope that they realize that science isn’t the enemy.

http://nueronalstimuli.com Lili

Re: quantum; I thought I’d point out a couple of interesting examples where quantum effects are very apparent in our everyday lives: photosynthesis and your sense of smell. Photosynthesis doesn’t work without superposition. And without tunneling, your sense of smell wouldn’t work either. Just thought I’d point that out, as I found the statement that quantum physics will never affect your everyday life as a bit too generalized a statement. Unfortunately, pointing that out has the side effect of allowing the Chopra people to use it as an example of “evidence”. My pet peeve is the Pseudos referencing real studies or scientific facts, mangling them through a horrendous twisted misinterpretation, and then using that as proof of their quackery. But I digress. Anyways, interesting stuff.

Pierce R. Butler

The story of the guy with the quantum penis only talks about his “organic” penis.

So either the concepts of “organic” and “quantum” are synonymous (quantum gardening – wow!) or he has more than one tadger.

JB

Probably someone’s spellchecker auto-corrected “penes” to “penis.”

Happens to me all the time.

http://www.skepticalmothering.com Christine

I love this – especially the drawing for “Natural!” Not too long ago I created my own list along these lines, but it was nowhere near as cool. (The only advantage mine has is it references So I Married an Axe Murderer.)

I’ll be sharing this, thanks!

Ed Seedhouse

Um, heroin is a synthetic derivative of morphine, not “natural”. Even Morphine has to be obtained from opium by processing it.

Opium is natural, more or less, though you don’t get at it without artificially scraping the sap off the plant. When people tell me if I believe in herbal medicine I say “yes, the natural sap of certain varieties of the poppy flower is a good herbal remedy for pain”. But of course the synthetic derivatives are even better.

Karla

Please add homeopathic (or homeopathetic, as I call it). I must not be explaining it correctly, because I have several friends who insist that the crap does them some good.
Thanks! (linked over here from freethoughtblogs.com)

Lan

The issue may be the placebo effect, much pseudoscience relies on not super sick people believing that they feel a bit better after doing whatever ritual is being toted. Some herbal supplements can be beneficial in very specific instances but your homeopathy loving friends are likely just tricking themselves into thinking they are feeling better… oh placebos, so tricky.

Tokamakarov

Don’t forget regression to the mean. You’re really sick one day, drink some plain wate… sorry, homeopathic medicine and the next day you feel better. Of course, you would have felt better anyway, since you’d already reached the peak…

As it’s said for most cold remedies: if you take them, you’ll be healthy in a week. If you don’t, it’ll take you seven days.

Amy

Love it. The fallacious nature of Natural = Good is great. I would add that “natural” is a ludicrous non-distinction. Where are people getting all these un-natural substances? I think it’s Dr. Mercola who likes to refer to MSG as a harmful chemical and a toxin … unless he’s referring to it as an ingredient in his patented snake oil concoction. Then it’s one of your body’s important, naturally occurring amino acids.

http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com/ Terry Gibbs

My dad was a chemist, and his father was a pharmacist, while my mom is a new-ager so the natural stuff was well covered in my childhood years.

My mom took six or more different vitamins and supplements each day. Oddly for a pharmacist, my grandfather felt taking vitamins at all was wrong. He was thought taking one multivitamin probably wouldn’t hurt, but taking a self-proscribed assortment was just asking for trouble.

David

Quantum, eh? The quantum effect that I found most impressive in high school has to do with light polarization. If you place perpendicular polarizing filters behind each other, all incoming light will be blocked. But if you place additional polarizing filters between those two, each rotated just a bit from the last one, light gets through. Funny no one mentioned photovoltaic cells. If those things /don’t/ change my life, I will be rather disappointed (disclosure: I own one or two hundred dollars worth of stock in photovoltaic companies, all of which have done very badly for me so far).

Although I agree with almost everything you say and have ranted about them myself for decades, and although I think Deepak is a nut, I was recently surprised to find scientific evidence of quantum effects on a macroscopic level. Not telepathy of course, but I refer you to the “Kinetic Isotope effect” and, from another angle, the work of Martin Heisenberg (no apparent relation). May apply to quantum effects in neurotransmitters. Good science, good fun, but no mysticism.